Certain refrigerator appliances include sealed systems for cooling chilled chambers of the refrigerator appliances. The sealed systems generally include a compressor that generates compressed refrigerant during operation of the sealed systems. The compressed refrigerant flows to an evaporator where heat exchange between the chilled chambers and the refrigerant cools the chilled chambers and food items located therein.
Recently, certain refrigerator appliances have included linear compressors for compressing refrigerant. Linear compressors generally include a piston and a driving coil. The driving coil receives a current that generates a force for sliding the piston forward and backward within a chamber. During motion of the piston within the chamber, the piston compresses refrigerant. Motion of the piston within the chamber is generally controlled such that the piston does not crash against another component of the linear compressor during motion of the piston within the chamber. Such head crashing can damage various components of the linear compressor, such as the piston or an associated cylinder.
While head crashing is preferably avoided, it can be difficult to monitor and/or detect head crashing. Certain methods for detecting head crashes within linear compressors monitor a slope of the voltage and/or current supplied to the driving coil over time in order to detect sudden changes or discontinuities in the slope. In such methods, the sudden changes or discontinuities in the slope are correlated to a head crash event. Such methods can be cumbersome. For example, such methods can require large amounts of memory for an associated processor to calculate the slope and/or detect the sudden changes or discontinuities in the slope. In addition, such methods can require knowledge of when the piston is approaching a top dead center position at the head of the cylinder.
Accordingly, a method for detecting or monitoring head crashing within a linear compressor during operation of the linear compressor would be useful. In particular, a method for that can quickly and/or efficiently detect or monitor head crashing within a linear compressor during operation of the linear compressor would be useful.